Friday, December 21, 2012

The U.S. EPA has issued a 278-page Progress Report
on its study of the potential impacts of hydraulic fracturing on drinking
water resources.The report outlines the framework for the final study, but
does not draw any conclusions.Those
will be made in the final study.

The Executive
Summary says that the work is arranged around the five stages of the hydraulic
fracking water cycle and questions about the possible impacts on drinking water
resources of:

large volume
water withdrawals from ground and surface waters;

hydraulic
fracturing fluid surface spills on or near well pads;

the injection
and fracturing process;

flowback and
produced water surface spills on or near well pads; and

inadequate treatment
of hydraulic fracturing wastewater

The report
describes 18 research projects underway to answer these research questions.There are five different types:

analysis of
existing data on chemicals and practices; data is drawn from nine companies that
hydraulically fractured 24,925 wells between September 2009 and October 2010,
and additional data on chemicals and water use for hydraulic fracturing from
over 12,000 well-specific chemical disclosures in FracFocus.EPA is evaluating data on causes and volumes
of spills of hydraulic fracturing fluids and wastewater drawn from state spill
databases in Colorado, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania, and from the National
Response Center national database of oil and chemical spills;

scenario
evaluations, including potential impacts to drinking water
sources from withdrawing large volumes of water in the Upper Colorado River
Basin and the Susquehanna River Basin;

laboratory
studies on potential impacts of inadequately treating hydraulic
fracturing wastewater and discharging it to rivers;

toxicity
assessments of chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing fluids from 2005 to
2011 and chemicals found in flowback and produced water; and

case studies of locations
in Colorado, North Dakota, Pennsylvania (in Bradford and Washington counties), and Texas

EPA is also reviewing
scientific literature relevant to the study’s research questions.

Results of the study are expected to
be released in a draft for public and peer review in 2014.

MCMR finds that coal’s
share of the global energy mix continues to rise; coal demand continues to rise
globally, led by China and India; and by 2017 coal will come close to
surpassing oil as the world’s top energy source.All without meaningful progress in developing
or deploying carbon
capture and sequestration (CCS) or other technologies.

IEA’s notes thatthe United States is the
exception to the rule of rising global coal demand, as coal here is being displaced
by natural gas. However, while U.S. domestic coal consumption has fallen, exports
of U.S. coal have risen.

IEA Executive Director Maria
van der Hoeven said
that “the world will burn around 1.2 billion more tonnes of coal per year by
2017 compared to today – equivalent to the current coal consumption of Russia
and the United States combined.”

That works out to an
additional 1.2 billion tons of CO2 emissions per year.

In a study
published in the journal Science, Mills says that insurers now pay an
average of $50 billion a year in weather- and climate-related insurance losses,
including property damage and business disruptions.He says that such claims have been doubling every decade since the 1980s.

In the face of those loses and certainty
that they will mount, Evans says that the insurance industry has chosen to
invest about $2 trillion (44% of industry revenues) in a variety of initiatives
in 51 countries:

These activities have grown since 2008, when the global
economic downturn began. Mills
told the Los Angeles Times that,
rather than repeating the tired “political rhetoric” that it cannot afford such
measures now, the industry instead “believes it can't afford not to”
make these investments.

That is the attitude that other industries and governments fail to
adopt at our peril.

A Green thing

The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a Green thing that stands in the way. Some see Nature all Ridicule and Deformity...and some scarce see Nature at all. But to the eyes of the Man of Imagination, Nature is Imagination itself.

William Blake, English poet (1757-1827)

About Me

John is Director of the Center for Environment, Energy, and Economy and Lecturer in Sustainability at Harrisburg University of Science and Technology. He is a former Senior Fellow and current Advisory Board member at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, and a consultant. He served as Secretary of the PA Department of Environmental Protection from Jan. 2015-May 2016, and as Secretary of the PA Department of Conservation and Natural Resources from April 2009-Jan. 2011. He is the only person in PA's history to serve as Secretary of both of the state's natural resource agencies. He also served as a two term Mayor of Hazleton, PA, and as an Alternate Federal Commissioner on the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin.
John is a graduate of Bloomsburg University with a degree in economics, and holds a Master of Public Administration degree from Lehigh University.